Slow Day

It was a slow day here in Mundgod. It's Sunday, which is a national holiday every week. That's kind of strange because hardly anyone in India is a Christian. It's one of those relics left over from the Raj (British rule). So there were no teachings from the Dalai Lama today. I basically watched TV (CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, and a Bollywood movie). It's nice to have days like that on a long vacation. We also did laundry, although we paid an Indian women to actually do the washing and hanging clothes on the line. We had to do the folding.

Yesterday, we caught the end of His Holiness's teaching. Although we missed some of it because the radio broke and we had to buy another one. And then the end part was just offerings for the Dalai Lama, so it was chanting that wasn't translated. In the afternoon, I went to take pictures of the new Drepung Loseling temple that will be dedicated tomorrow. I had to do some smooth talking with the police to get on the grounds, and I was not allowed inside. But I was inside two years ago when it was being built and it was mostly done then. So I can imagine what it looks like now.

After that, I managed to find one of the items I was hoping to buy when in India: a tapestry featuring the Tibetan Wheel of Life motif. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for as the Wheel of Life portion is printed on paper. I was hoping that would be silk too, but that would be really expensive. It's pretty hard to print on silk, and damn near impossible to get the resolution that would be required. It could be done with a pile weave or a four color weave, but it would take a very thin thread (5-10 strand) and would take an extremely skilled weaver to accomplish. So I guess I should be happy to get it on paper with silk framing. As usual, Tamding said I paid too much, and I probably did. But I got what I wanted. And getting ripped of in India is still a bargain compared to the US.

Oh, there's a tea update. Apparently one person has recieved tea. Their tea came via SpeedPost, which is a little faster than the Indian Postal service. But it had the same crazy packaging that all the others had and made it through Customs. So you might actually get some tea soon. If you do, email me so I know.